He smiled up at her as he bit into a pink slice of cold ham, the first he had tasted in months.
"Oh, did you, Al?" asked Mrs. Falkner in a low voice. She was silent a moment, then went on, slowly, "The Collins boy is in the rebel army. Frank—Frank—was killed at Prairie Grove." Her voice broke.
The smile vanished from Al's face.
"Oh, Mrs. Falkner!" he exclaimed. "How sorry I am. Poor old Frank! And your husband—Doctor Falkner?"
"Is a surgeon in Sherman's army," she said. "So long as he is left to me I should be thankful, for I am only one of thousands who have lost sons or husbands in our Nation's cause. What of your own parents, Al?"
Then he told her of his father's death and Tommy's capture and of his mother and Annie in St. Louis. For some time they talked, then Mrs. Falkner returned upstairs, while Al lay down behind the pile of boxes and was at once wrapped in the profound slumber of exhaustion.
No one disturbed the lonely house during the remaining hours of the day nor the early ones of the following night, for most of the Confederate army was farther uptown or in bivouac outside its limits. Sometime toward morning Mrs. Falkner awakened Al and conducted him cautiously to the cave, leaving him there with an ample supply of food for several days. The next day and night passed and Al still lay in his cramped refuge, undisturbed, but very stiff and uncomfortable and eager to get out and away.
During the second day Mrs. Falkner came to the cave and dropped a note down to him through a crack in the roof. In it she informed him that Colonel Harding and his command had been paroled the day before and marched away toward Jefferson City accompanied by an escort, to be delivered within the Union lines, wherever these might be met with. The last of the Confederate troops, she wrote, had just left, crossing the Missouri on steamboats and marching away westward, to join General Price's main army. The town was still quiet, but every one feared that gangs of guerillas would soon swoop down upon it; and she advised Al to make his escape as soon as darkness came.
Taking his revolver and such of his remaining food as he could conveniently carry, he accordingly crept out of his hiding-place soon after nightfall and made his way to the southeastward, following the country roads and keeping his direction by the stars. About six o'clock the next morning he arrived on the river bank opposite Boonville. Making inquiries of a negro, he found that the town was in possession of Union troops, and he soon crossed the river on the ferry. To his surprise and delight, the paroled garrison of Glasgow was just coming into town when he arrived, Wallace among them. They were loud in their praises of the kind treatment they had received at the hands of their captors, and especially of the escort under Lieutenant Graves, which had brought them down to the near vicinity of Boonville; for the Confederate soldiers had shared their rations with the prisoners and made their march as comfortable as possible in every way.
At Boonville the paroled men separated to await exchange; and Al and Wallace continued their journey together, going down to Jefferson City in an army wagon and thence by the Pacific Railroad to St. Louis, where they arrived safe during the second morning after leaving Boonville.